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Friday, 19 September 2014

Never give up

No sooner do I do a blog post today saying I have nothing to write about, than I get some news.

Those of you who follow my blog regularly will know that Mr A has been persistently badgering the manager of Milas council concerning the dogs in our village. For months Mr A has put pressure on the manager to push the council vet to do the job he is supposed to do, and that is to implement the TNR programme (trap, neuter and release). We were getting nowhere with this vet. Our village has become the responsibility of Milas council since the beginning of the year, and we did manage to get two female dogs from the industrial estate spayed with the council vet at the end of last winter. The vet had promised to neuter one dog a week, but he didn't honour his promise.

Since then we have taken several dogs that were most vulnerable to the Milas shelter ourselves. In the meantime, I continued to feed the dogs in the village, and Mr A continued to apply pressure on the council....at one point even taking the problem to the Governor of Mugla Province.

This week as usual I have been going down into the village every other morning to feed the dogs. During the school holidays they were to be found in the school playground. However, the children started back at school this week, so the dogs had been chased away at the end of last week. Last weekend was the last time I saw all the dogs. They were on waste ground opposite the school. When I went down on Tuesday morning, there was just one dog. I fed her, and left the remaining food for the others should they appear later.

This morning there were no dogs at all. I left the food in the usual place. Mr A has been trying to ring the Muhtar to find out where the dogs are. It seems the Muhtar has also been trying to contact him, but they keep missing each other.

Finally this evening Mr A came home and spoke to the Muhtar. The dogs were all collected this week by Milas council and taken to the shelter. We have been informed that they will all be neutered and vaccinated and at some point returned to the village.

I can't quite believe this has happened. It's what we had hoped for, and I guess I won't really believe it until the dogs reappear with their eartags to indicate they have been neutered. If/when we reach that point, we will continue to feed them regularly (every day throughout the winter) and keep them healthy.

Meanwhile, we will be looking out for any other dogs that arrive in the village. It's not unusual to find them dumped here. When that happens we will take them to the Milas shelter ourselves if we can.

The next challenge will be to get the Milas vet to neuter as many of the industrial estate dogs as possible.

This work is never-ending. Sometimes we despair and feel that no-one is listening. But today we have proved that we should never give up fighting for these dogs.

Our winter feeding programme will commence in earnest at the end of October, and if we are to continue to feed as many strays as possible, we need your help. If you would like to donate something (no matter how small) please go to the Paypal button at the top of this page. Thankyou so much to everyone who has donated so far. I am sure you are as happy as I am to know that we are gradually making progress.

5 comments:

Good question BtoB. He really doesn't have any choice as far as the law is concerned with the TNR programme, because once neutered the dogs have to be returned to where they were collected. Whether he is happy about it remains to be seen. He hasn't raised any objections so far, and knows that we will continue to feed them and keep them healthy. So we'll see!

This is excellent news and you are totally responsible for it!Hoping that people are definitely taking notice of your example to the dog population and all the residents.It's really good to get some better news.Maggie x

If you would like to help with feeding, care and veterinary treatment for my 12 rescued dogs and the many other street dogs in our village and the surrounding area, please email me at lindaikaya@hotmail.com for details. Thankyou

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About Me

A warm welcome to my Blog

My life in Turkey.

The ups and downs, the trials and tribulations, the happy and the sad....not forgetting the often disastrous adventures of Mr Ayak.My time is taken up these days with animal rescue. I had 11 rescue dogs at home until Dave, one of three rescued pups passed away on 11 January 2015, so then there were 10. On 30th November 2015 we brought home another dog found dumped on the streets, so back up to 11 dogs. Another rescue on 17th March 2016 now brings the total to 12.

We also feed as many strays as possible, in our village and beyond. If you would like to help with all this, please email me at lindaikaya@hotmail.com for details.I welcome your comments. Since I started this blog I've received good advice and reassurance from the blogging community, and some very kind messages.If you're just a reader but not a blogger, think about starting your own blog. It's great fun and very therapeutic. I'd strongly recommend it!